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Designer, activist, academic,
and author of Lo—TEK,
Design by Radical Indigenism.
A leading expert of Lo—TEK nature-based technologies for climate-resilience.
Her eponymously named studio brings creative and conceptual, interdisciplinary thinking to urban projects and corporate clients interested in systemic and sustainable change. Julia regularly teaches urban design at Harvard and Columbia University.
Eden in Iraq Wastewater Treatment Park in Chibayish, Southern Wetlands of Iraq
Date: 2011 - Ongoing
Location: Southern Wetlands, IQ
Project Team: Meridel Rubenstein + Dr. Mark Nelson + Dr. Davide Tocchetto + Julia Watson
Client: Nature Iraq (non-profit)
Julia was the landscape design consultant for a twenty thousand square meter water remediation project in collaboration with Natur Iraq.
The site in the wetlands of Southern Iraq uses art, environmental design, and wastewater to create a restorative garden for recreation, education, and contemplation. She was the landscape consultant for the Singapore design workshop for the project, which will support approximately seven and a half thousand Marsh Arabs in Al-Manar, a town that lies in the wetland region between Basra and Nasiriyah. The park is a constructed wetland for the sewage collected by one of the town’s switch plants. The parkland design uses local materials: adobe brick, woven reed, ceramic tiles, and relief patterns. The designs are inspired by materials that include five Mesopotamian cylinder seal imagery, Marsh Arab woven wedding blanket patterns, planting, and tiles.
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